The Rev. James L. Bevel, a prominent figure in the civil rights movement whose legacy was clouded by an incest conviction, has died.

In Birmingham, Bevel is remembered as the man who decided to involve children in the civil rights movement, a move some say helped end segregation.

"If it hadn't been for Bevel, we would have been still scratching at it," said Joe Dickson, civil rights activist and former publisher of The Birmingham World, a black newspaper.

News files/Ed Jones From left to right: James Bevel, Rev. Richard Boone, and Rev. Harold Middebrooks at Bailey's Tabernacle Church. Demonstrations were called off and Bevel arrested. The Tuesday before street demonstrations resulted in 30 demonstrators injured and 210 arrested.

Bevel, a top lieutenant to Martin Luther King Jr., in 1963 presented to King the idea of having school children participate in the marches, a suggestion Dickson said King was hesitant to follow.

"(Bevel) said, 'Martin, they're not learning anything in schools. Maybe they'll learn something out here," Dickson said in an interview this morning.

National media attention given to what came to be known as the Children's Crusade helped bolster what was at the time a struggling movement, Dickson said.

On May 2, 1963, children marched from the 16th Street Baptist Church, and 600 were arrested on that first day of demonstrations. After the news media highlighted police commissioner Eugene "Bull" Connor's violent treatment of the children, public opinion began to shift in favor of the civil rights movement.

"Up until then, it looked like we were being defeated by Bull," Dickson said.

James Armstrong, 85, the Birmingham barber and civil rights foot soldier who carried the American flag at the head of the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery Voting Rights march, said he and his kids attended classes Bevel taught before those marches.

"He told them how to be non-violent. We were well-disciplined," Armstrong said this morning.

Bevel, 72, died Friday in Virginia after a fight with pancreatic cancer, said a daughter, Chevara Orrin, who lives in Winston-Salem, N.C. He was recently released on bond while appealing a 15-year prison sentence.

In April, a jury convicted Bevel of incest for having sex more than a decade ago with a then-teenage daughter.

Bevel served several months of his 15-year sentence before he was released in November on bond while appealing. Prosecutors opposed Bevel's release.

Dickson and Armstrong said it was hard for them to believe Bevel could do such things.

"When I heard about that, it startled me," Dickson said. "I couldn't fathom him being a pedophile, a child molester. I tried to block it out of my mind."

A Baptist minister, Bevel was a leader in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, two of the stalwart organizations that led efforts in the 1960s to desegregate the South. Decades later, he also helped organize the Million Man March.

Bevel fought to desegregate downtown Birmingham stores, prompting police to respond with fire hoses and attack dogs against peaceful protesters. He also rallied young people in the city to get involved in civil rights demonstrations -- something King and other advisers objected to.

Two years later, Bevel was a key figure in the march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama's capital. The demonstration was spurred largely by the killing of a young protester by an Alabama state trooper. The chain of events and police violence that was captured on national television ultimately culminated in the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Bevel also was active in the anti-war movement and greatly influenced King, who Bevel encouraged to confront the Vietnam War more directly.

After King's assassination in 1968, Bevel helped lead many of King's unfinished efforts, such as a demonstration to support striking sanitation workers in Memphis.

In the decades after King's death, Bevel aligned himself with fringe movements. In 1992, he was vice presidential running mate to political extremist Lyndon LaRouche, who at the time was in a federal prison for a tax conviction.

Bevel was born to sharecroppers on Oct. 19, 1936, in Itta Bena, Miss., one of 17 children. He had stints in the Navy and graduated in 1961 from Nashville's American Baptist Theological Seminary.

Bevel married four times. He fathered 16 children with nine women, Orrin told The Associated Press.

His legacy in the civil rights movement was clouded when he was convicted in April by a Loudoun County, Va., judge for having sex more than a decade ago with one of his daughters, Aaralyn Mills, who was a teenager at the time. Prosecutors said the assault occurred in Loudoun County, when Bevel was working closely with the Virginia-based organization led by LaRouche.

The four-day trial divided members of Bevel's large family, with relatives testifying for both the prosecution and defense. He was sentenced in October.

At that time, prosecutors revealed at least four other daughters had made similar allegations against him. The victims hoped for an apology and some reconciliation, but Bevel mocked the notion of an apology.

Orrin, who said she did not testify at Bevel's trial, said she was molested by her father when she was 12. On Saturday, she told The Associated Press she's still processing her "very complicated" feelings about his death.

She said Bevel's recent conviction does not detract from his work in the civil rights movement.

"I am very proud to be the daughter of a man who contributed so much to the world through his civil rights work. I am equally as devastated and disgusted by his pedophilia," Orrin said. "Both of those feelings reside in the same soul, in the same space of my heart."